A rolling element bearing comprises an inner ring, an outer ring and several rolling elements or bodies installed between these two rings. These rolling elements can be balls, rollers or needles. In the meaning of the invention, a rolling bearing and a rolling element bearing can be, for instance, a ball bearing, a roller bearing or a needle bearing.
In the field of rolling element bearings, it is known to attach one or more sensors to measure one or more physical parameters and transduce these physical parameters into electrical signals. When it comes to testing bearings in a test center, each bearing may be full of sensors to measure anything from temperature to load at different places on and parts of the bearing. In large size bearings there might even be sensors within one or more of its rollers. Bearings pose one big problem when trying to wirelessly collect all the data that the sensors are producing, bearings are mostly made of steel. Wireless transmission, especially using radio frequencies, and steel do not go well together. That the data transfer rate will go down and the nodes don't have an unlimited buffer space creates a problem. There is still room for improvements.